The CU2.0 Podcast

CU2.0 Podcast Episode 117 Fahd Rachidy CEO ABAKA on AI and How to Sell Smarter

October 20, 2020 Robert McGarvey Season 3 Episode 117
The CU2.0 Podcast
CU2.0 Podcast Episode 117 Fahd Rachidy CEO ABAKA on AI and How to Sell Smarter
Show Notes

Here's the fast track to making members feel they are being sold to: offer them products and services they have no interest in or use for. How often does your credit union do exactly that? 

But if you want a member to feel understood, valued, offer him or her something they honestly want or need.

If only it were so simple, you grumble.

Maybe it is exactly that simple.

Meet Fahd Rachidy, the CEO of London-based ABAKA, a company in the business of harnessing AI to help financial institutions - credit unions included - better serve their members.

Fahd also is a strong believer in democratizing his tools.  He proudly says ABAKA serves small financial institutions and giants.  The company uses a SaaS model - software as a service - so users pay as they go and for what they consume.  Some FIs spend low five figures in a year with ABAKA. Others may be high six figures and beyond.

So what you want to know is how offer members what they want. Really.  Listen to the podcast where Fahd tells about ABAKA's tools for zeroing in on what he calls the next best action - that is, pinpointing what this member wants now.

How? By using account data the institution has on hand, supplemented with publicly available third party data (from social media posts to credit scores and history).

Crunch that data right, says Fahd, and an institution can jump from a 3% conversion rate to 30%.

You want to hear more about this.

Along the way in this podcast Fahd also talks about ABAKA's conversational AI chatbot tools - and many members in fact prefer to talk with a machine - and also about how AI is making PFM tools, at long last, easy to use and actually useful.

The theme of this podcast is that AI has come of age and now is ready for credit union deployment.

Listen up.

Dig deeper into AI and credit unions in earlier CU2.0 Podcasts - with Posh Development and Coalesce, both DCU Innovation Lab companies (our podcast with the Innovation Lab director Vasilios Roussos is here).

Like what you are hearing? Find out how you can help sponsor this podcast here. Very affordable sponsorship packages are available. Email rjmcgarvey@gmail.com

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Find out more about CU2.0 and the digital transformation of credit unions here. It's a journey every credit union needs to take. Pronto